Satoshi whitepaper's "longest chain is Bitcoin" rule does not apply when comparing two chains with different consensus rules.

I have heard countless arguments that if BU ever gained 75% hashrate and forks, then it must be called Bitcoin because it is the longest chain according to Satoshi's whitepaper.

This statement is absolutely false. The whitepaper only used the longest chain rule to help determine which chain is Bitcoin in the event the Bitcoin network is being attacked. Because there will be more honest nodes mining, the longest chain wins. The longest chain is only used to determine winner of 2 chains using the same consensus rules.

When 2 chains are following different consensus rules, longest chain does not matter at all.

See for example the ETH/ETC hardfork. Different consensus rules. No one cares which chain is longest (i.e. more work). Users decide which they want to call Ethereum.

If there will be a contentious hardfork with BU nodes forking to a 2mb chain, it doesn't matter if that chain has 75% of the miners on it. 2 different consensus rules means 2 different coins. And users will decide which coin they will call Bitcoin. Hashrate and miners don't decide that for the users.

Here's an analogy. What happens when chess game makers decide to come together to change the chess board from an 8x8 to a 9x9 board because they think having more space to play chess is better? Would users just accept that and call the new game chess? No, they won't refer to the new game (with new rules) as chess. They will still refer to the original game (on an 8x8 board with the original rules) as chess.

That said, it is possible that users will decide that the BU fork is Bitcoin. But it will be because they choose to call that Bitcoin, and not because a majority hashrate demands it to be called Bitcoin.

The proof-of-work also solves the problem of determining representation in majority decision making. If the majority were based on one-IP-address-one-vote, it could be subverted by anyone able to allocate many IPs. Proof-of-work is essentially one-CPU-one-vote. The majority decision is represented by the longest chain, which has the greatest proof-of-work effort invested in it. If a majority of CPU power is controlled by honest nodes, the honest chain will grow the fastest and outpace any competing chains.

They vote with their CPU power, expressing their acceptance of valid blocks by working on extending them and rejecting invalid blocks by refusing to work on them. Any needed rules and incentives can be enforced with this consensus mechanism.

Not it's not. It clarifies multiple times. "Any needed rules and incentives can be enforced with this consensus mechanism". He just said that CPU power is the consenus mechanism and any rules can be decided with it.

I'm happy they come here to learn the truth and happy to even upvote these questions. We always had the advantage of just being able to say the way things are, because we're on the side of truth and we don't need lies, censorship and propaganda to get a point across. Contrary to people such as /u/nullc who (ab)use their intelligence to spread eloquent sounding misinfo and manipulate their followers with falsehoods. (And I'm extremely happy miners turn out to not be brainwashable either.) That's why I love this sub.

(And I'm extremely happy miners turn out to not be brainwashable either.)

Given that SegWit will change the fee landscape to the detriment of miners, there is ~25..30% of hash power that might well be brainwashed ...

I am not sure about the dynamics either but I think if you are honest, you'd likely also conclude that this area needs a lot more careful (open, uncensored and considerate!) thought and that is is way too premature as a miner to signal SegWit now.

Note: I do like parts of SegWit. As solely a non-hodling user not concerned about chain security, I of course like all stuff you can build on top of the chain and I don't care about miners getting paid by fees. LN, LN, LN. As a hodler, I have a different opinion. I see the centralization risk of huge full nodes to some extend (yes), but I also see the risk of diminishing on-chain security due to diminishing fees.

But exactly this main economic part of SegWit, the intended shift of on-chain to LN goes along with a shift of on-chain fees to LN hub fees.

We never had a proper discussion about this, just lots and lots of propaganda.

Yes exactly, and it would be great if we would (have some great discussions). Does promoting off-chain risk the long term viability of Bitcoin because of diminishing on-chain tx fees? In my opinion, yes. But Core just blocking on-chain outright, is absolutely terrible terrible decision making.

I think the market will find a good equilibrium between the two, eventually. After all, even with a high-throughput settlement network built on top of bitcoin, there are always going to be cases where you have to move bitcoin "for real" on the blockchain. I have a feeling that no second-layer solution will be perfect, so there will always be a measure of risk with their use which will ensure that demand for "blockchain transactions" remains high.

Anyway, for something as complicated as SW + LN, I would like to see a working prototype before the protocol is taken down that path. The blocksize increase is simply more urgent and the ecosystem cannot wait any longer.

es multiple times. "Any needed rules and incentives can be enforced with this consensus mechanism". He just said that CPU power

look i dont think we should blindly take bits an pieces out a whitepaper and treat it like bible passages without trying to consider it in the real world. That paragraph was taken from the days, when all nodes were mining nodes. There were no mining pools or asics.

I try to abstract what bitcoin is and think of it from a higher level.

The bitcoin business logic, is implemented all full nodes, they govern the definition of a valid blockchain. However there can be many valid blockchains, therefore proof of work is used to allow nodes to converge on a single valid blockchain ( that is least likely to be manipulated to serve an individuals interests ).

At any moment in time, with or without the permission of miners, someone can release a new version client, which changes the logic. This will result in a fork of the chain with a new set of miners helping a separate network converge to a single block-chain based on the new consensus rules. You cant say this is not possible, because for a long time we considered doing this here in this sub.

The question is which one is bitcoin? The paper doesn't really deal with this use case and at the end of the day, the people who have the biggest influence in the name of the two coins will be the exchanges that support both coins and the payment processors like bitpay.

Personally i think this argument is pointless, (tomato tamato ). When the fork occurs there will be two coins A and B. One will be worth more than and the one that is worth less will eventually fade away, then the one that remains can be colloquially called 'bitcoin'

Wow. It is really sad how weak your arguments have gotten as the level of your desperation goes up. Nakamoto consensus is as much about the ledger itself as it is about the protocol used to construct it. Just accept that you are wrong about this.

This is taking Satoshi out of context in a dishonest way. He was talking about an attacker changing the content of the ledger itself, not a majority of miners agreeing to upgrade the protocol, and you know it. Shame.

such as creating value out of thin air or taking money that never belonged to the attacker

Anyway, the 1 MB limit was added at some point without people crying about it fundamentally changing what Bitcoin was, so surely its removal should be a similar non-event. Unless you do consider the 1 MB limit addition a fundamental, important change, in which case Bitcoin was already co-opted in the past and we here are valiant fighters reverting this arbitrary change, this attack, and returning Bitcoin to the original vision.

Great analogy. If you change a rule within the game, it's a softfork which many people will be able to live with. If you change the whole board or the pieces that take part, it's a hardfork and you'll have to convince chess players to all start playing 9x9.

Yes, I agree with him. If BU wants to become Bitcoin, then it will need the vast majority of all groups involved to believe that. Hashrate alone is not enough as that would mean whoever has the biggest pockets in the world can hijack the name Bitcoin.

I think the point is that the hashrate will do what's in its own financial interest. If that assumption does not hold, as was assumed in the original paper, then all sorts of other worse attacks are possible.

Sure, it will do what it wants, but that doesn't hijack the name Bitcoin. A word is not attached to the amount of money behind it, but to what people believe it is. Just like we all decide that Bitcoin is a currency, regardless of the fact that the banks and governments say it can't be.

"That said, it is possible that users will decide that the BU fork is Bitcoin. But it will be because they choose to call that Bitcoin, and not because a majority hashrate demands it to be called Bitcoin."

The problem is 'who decides the rules'. Under your view of Nakamoto consensus, the rules were set out at the beginning and can only ever be tightened with network consensus. In our view, consensus is determined by hashpower majority.

There are arguments for both sides based on what Satoshi proposed. He talked about how the "core design" was set in stone from the beginning. You take that as support for your position, whereas we see it as merely a description of the fact that consensus gets more difficult to change over time, not a normative statement on how to progress.

He also said that hashpower serves as "majority representation" in decision making. This supports our idea of 'Nakamoto Consensus', where the rules are not set in stone from the beginning but that they are an emergent property of the network, where hashpower is the deciding factor. Yet hashpower is strongly incentivized to act according to the market's will, keeping their power in check. You don't accept this view, but we find your "he's only talking about transaction validity" argument unconvincing.

If Bitcoin is not supposed to always be the longest chain, by proof of work, why does it handle a collapse in hashpower with such gracelessness? It would have been just as easy to have a dynamic difficulty adjustment based on the last X blocks, in fact it's arguably easier than the 'readjust every 2016 blocks' mechanism. That mechanism makes it seem like, as others have argued, the minority chain was always meant to concede and die away in the event of a hard fork where hashpower majority changes the rules. Otherwise why did they not account for this plainly obvious possibility and develop a system which would handle it more gracefully?

Yes, in the end "what is Bitcoin" is ultimately decided by people. However the very design of Bitcoin made it so that hashpower majority would be capable of overruling a minority chain, in the absense of that chain also hard forking.

Wow, much respect. After wading through hundreds of replies to my post, this is the first reply that is not attacking me and does bring up a good point! Seriously, kudos.

I agree that what I understand about Bitcoin differs than many here. And that's fine. I don't need to convince anyone.

As for your question about why Bitcoin is not designed for this failure scenario. I don't know. Maybe Satoshi never envisioned that Bitcoin could fail in this way. It would also complicated the algorithm/code too much. The 4x max diff change every 2 weeks was simple to understand and works 99% of the time. The times when it doesn't work, it fails spectacularly. So probably an oversight.

Back in the day everyone always talked about 51% attacks. ie. what could happen if a malicious actor took the majority of the hashpower. It was widely agreed that the worst they could do is orphan all other blocks and censor transactions to only those they choose to allow. Yet it seems like a 'hashpower majority rules change attack' would be entirely forseeable through the same line of thought. Yet in that scenario minority-Bitcoin just flat out starts failing for a long period of time until the difficulty period is passed, if it ever is.

To determine the original intent we'd have to ask Satoshi. In his absence we only have the other early developers.

/u/gavinandresen, /u/jgarzik, you guys are probably biased towards the 'hard forks are acceptable' side, but do you recall any kind of discussion in the early days about what would happen if the hashpower majority tried to force a rules change?

We've seen it with Namecoin before it was merged mined. When hashrate leaves it, there will still be a group of dedicated Namecoin miners that would mine at a loss until the diff change. And that took like 3 months sometimes. My bet is we will see the same thing with Bitcoin.

It's also vastly, vastly cheaper to keep namecoin going for a few months.

Edit: I will say that I'm still not 100% sure that minority chain failure was the intent. Other blockchains have since considered this scenario more deeply, and along with difficulty adjustment, some simply have the minority chain stop trying after being X blocks behind. Deliberate failure in the case of a majority fork could have been made more explicit if they wanted to.

If you have mining hardware that is idle you can use it to mine any suitable coin. However, if you are using a coin like Bitcoin that has a high hash rate, you won't be accomplishing much unless you are burning through a lot of electricity. This is not like it was in the early days when mining was inexpensive and done as a hobbyist thing.

Also, I don't think it will necessarily be expensive to mine on the original chain. It all depends on the price of both coins. If one coin is twice the price of the other coin, it will get twice the hashrate. And miners on both chains will make the same amount of money.

Also, I don't think it will necessarily be expensive to mine on the original chain. It all depends on the price of both coins. If one coin is twice the price of the other coin, it will get twice the hashrate. And miners on both chains will make the same amount of money.

This is the real reason why the fork won't happen unless the market genuinely does support it. The miners are ultimately accountable to the price. If Bitcoin Unlimited is what the market wants, it will be Bitcoin and the minority fork will die. If not, firstly they likely would never have initiated the fork, but secondly once it is clear that the minority chain is genuinely in demand, it will cease to be the minority hashpower chain again.

To resolve this we really should lobby for a futures market on forks, to remove the ambiguity of the market's demands.

I don't understand what the point would be in the hashpower majority forking off if the market did not demand it. Such a coin would not command a high price (by the definition of the scenario) and not be valued by the market, there is no profit in it. They themselves would be stuck with the difficulty bomb set for the minority chain (it costs perhaps $20 million to $31 million based on current difficulty and price to get Bitcoin through a difficulty adjustment period, and they would only recuperate some small portion of that back). If the purpose was take-over, it would easily be subverted by a change in PoW. If the purpose was to disrupt Bitcoin, there are already many cheaper methods to do this at present. It would require miners in the majority to collectively commit economic suicide for no clear reason.

The truth is, the market does demand an increase in block size. Miners are not actually the leaders in this regard, they are merely following what has been demanded for years.

With Bitcoin, you don't need to trust. And that's the point. If all users refuse to accept, then miners can't take it wherever they want. But if you and others believe in BU and accept what miners tell you, then you are just willingly giving up your powers to miners.

With Bitcoin, you don't need to trust. And that's the point. If all users refuse to accept, then miners can't take it wherever they want.

That is a misunderstanding. If an attacker controls 51% of the hashing power, he can take anything available for bitcoin for free. Regardless of the number of confirmations; and no full node offers protection.

It doesn't even cost him any mining income.

He can just make the payment; let the honest minority mine and confirm. After enough confirmations release his chain that undoes the payment.

Alternatively, if he really wants to do damage, he can start undoing the last day or days of all transactions by withholding/releasing.

Neither the most lucrative, nor the most destructive attacks involve creating invalid blocks. We must trust the mining majority to trust transactions, or as the paper explains:

The system is secure as long as honest nodes collectively control more CPU power than any cooperating group of attacker nodes.

No, if Bitcoin can magically be the currency that addresses everyone's needs, I will do my best to shutdown Litecoin and reduce confusion. You probably don't believe me, but it's the truth.

And I also believe, if Bitcoin hardforks and does too much onchain scaling, it will reduce the security and decentralization. And Litecoin may become the most secure and decentralized (therefore uncensorable) coin and become worth more than Bitcoin. You also probably don't believe this, but it's also the truth.

I am not pushing for this because I want what's best for Bitcoin first and foremost.

And I also believe, if Bitcoin hardforks and does too much onchain scaling, it will reduce the security and decentralization. And Litecoin may become the most secure and decentralized (therefore uncensorable) coin and become worth more than Bitcoin. You also probably don't believe this, but it's also the truth.

Alone this sentence already disqualifies you. There's no truths here. It's all just speculation. Not acknowledging this shows the problem "central" planners like you cause.

I will do my best to shutdown Litecoin

Dude.. what's wrong with you, seriously? If you think you can shutdown Litecoin then you didn't understand anything.

But if you and others believe in BU and accept what miners tell you, then you are just willingly giving up your powers to miners.

The way you use selective distortion to lead your viewpoint here is pretty telling. Believing in BU is in no way accepting what miners tell you and is in no way giving up powers to miners. Are we not allowed to believe in BU because we see it as the superior solution?

Of course every individual can fork on their choice. And in the case of breaking the inflation schedule they probably will choose to ignore the mining majority. This would create 2 bitcoin currencies, long term since it is very fundamental. The question you need to ask is whether changing the block size is similarly fundamental (note the Core's own roadmap eventually suggests doing so). if it is prepare coinbase for 2 bitcoin forks, if it is not, follow the mining majority.

The "argument" you are using BTW, that changing the block size implies a future 21m coin change is called the slippery slope fallacy.

If there's no consensus and users split with the fork, then we need to prepare for 2 bitcoin forks. From what I can tell all over the place is that there is no consensus at all. It's not about whether or not we believe changing the block size is a fundamental change to Bitcoin. It's about what the users believe.

You still don't get it. The fact of the matter is that bitcoin is 100% predicated on the majority of miners being honest, if they were not, the coin is worthless. THEREFORE, you cannot have conclusions that are based on them not being honest, because everything else falls apart anyways. Bitcoin would die, it would have a value of 0, this is precisely why it won't happen. It's like dividing by zero, it has no meaning.

"Trust" in this context just means "assume they aren't idiots." I know you said you see a lot of irrational actors, so you may think that assumption is not reliable, but you should realize that this "trust" is not the same meaning as when we say "Bitcoin is a trustless payment system." In that context it means you don't have to hope someone is a nice guy and won't screw you over. In u/tomtomtom7's comment, trust doesn't mean rely on them being nice, it means rely on them being intelligently profit-seeking. That's the assumption Bitcoin is built on. Miners follow the market, else Bitcoin is broken.

You're just misinterpreting what is happening. The BU miners are responding to the market place of users complaining about the delays and high fees. These miners will be supported by them and the economic majority.

You still didn't get the point of PoW did you? The point is: miners could create that double blockreward bitcoin but would most likely fork bitcoin into two with such a contentious decision. Users would then have a choice between the normal blockreward version and the new doubled block reward version. Coins of which ever fork is wanted more by the market and users will have a higher value. Due to this higher value more miners will go there and in long term this chain will - again - accumulate the most Proof of Work.

The important point here is that if two competing forks use the same PoW algo then we have a clear way to tell which is Bitcoin. The one with the most accumulated PoW. PoW algo changes are a whole other topic but without them it's that easy!

Are you purposely cozying up to Core developers in some sad attempt to raise Litecoin's price by getting Segwit deployed there? Or by sowing discontent in Bitcoin?

Because Segwit isn't going to activate on your coin, "Satoshi Lite" (hubris much?). And all the rah-rah Core stuff just serves to get BU activated that much faster -- BU now has more support amongst miners than Segwit, and still growing. Keep it up though!

And users will decide which coin they will call Bitcoin.

Yep, and it will be the Unlimited chain, with more hashpower, more users, higher price, larger blocks, faster adoption rate, lower fees, quicker confirmation times, and more (all?) bitcoin businesses supporting it. CrippleCoin will have virtually no purpose afterwards, just like Ethereum Classic.

At that point, please take Greg, Peter Todd, and Luke off Bitcoin's hands. For the right price, I'm sure they'd be happy to bring their patented toxicity to Litecoin instead.

In my experience, both subs have more than their fair share of "venomous people." But yes, one of them is also censored. Also in my opinion, much of the "venom" in this sub can be attributed to that censorship. (That's something that tends to really rub people the wrong way.)

The network with the greatest hash power will be the least vulnerable to attack and will attract the most premium for its tokens. The greatest volume of transactions will go to the most secure chain - if anyone really thinks that they have achieved some kind of victory by retaining the name "bitcoin" for a crippled, vulnerable remnant of a chain then they probably care more about their pride and their control than bitcoin itself. Why confuse users with this sophistry - they expect the mainstream coin to be called bitcoin - users have already been confused enough with this wonderful new technology that every one talks about but that doesn't confirm their transactions in any expected timeframe.

Your analogy lacks the perspective of time - no doubt that if 9x9 chess was immensely popular an 8x8 chess became only played by a few lunatic anachronists then 8x8 would eventually be forgotten about and 9x9 chess would probably just take over the name of "chess" (and 8x8 chess would be called "historic chess"). Modern day tennis is nothing like its original version, in fact it is even vastly different from 40 years ago --- still tennis.

People arguing to try and force the majority to be labelled BTU are just digging their own graves. How so? Well:

The more that they fight against the majority and keep trying to retain ownership and control of the word bitcoin the greater the incentive of the majority to crush out of existence the remnant chain - and I can already see, given the amount of people arguing that post HF BU chain should be called BTU and trying to retain "bitcoin" for the minority chain, that this would be the clearest and wisest course of action - and I hope they do it.

"Bitcoin" will be the thing that survives the coming hardfork process largely intact - which I expect will be based on the BU implementation, and not the fundamentalist schism that was forcibly expelled from the church.

Perhaps the minority chain should be called "bitcoin limited" - after all that is what it will be....

I'm glad - I would hope commonsense will prevail across the community.

BTW, I generalized my reply and did not say "you" were arguing these things - the only place I said "you/your" was in response to your analogy. I did this because I can see that a turf war is starting over the use of the name bitcoin and I wanted to state my position.

Please read my post again. I'm not commenting on Bitcoin Core or Bitcoin Unlimited being Bitcoin. If Bitcoin Core has 75% hashrate and Bitcoin Unlimited does a UAHF to fork away Bitcoin, that can still be Bitcoin.

That's why Bitcoin uses PoW in the first place. And you know that, I wonder why you try to move away from hard facts to soft, unclear language.

AFAIK you are an engineer from MIT, so I guess you should have good knowledge of logic. That you are arguing so illogically lately makes one assume, that you aren't honest and that you know, that you are spreading bullshit. For whatever reason (Litecoin having no place, when Bitcoin can do more transcations?)

I think other answers covered everything I might say so I'm not going to add much.

I will say that UAHF is dumb and the node count can be easily manipulated. BU will only ever be activiated by hash rate since that's how it's designed. If it never activates then the consensus will be that segwit is the best solution and I'll personally accept that. If BU wins and we loose some core people who don't play well with others than that sounds good to me too.

[..] users will decide which coin they will call Bitcoin [..] right! The chess example is not good, because the game would be very different. It's mor like having a bigger Bag for shopping - that changes nearly nothing!

In the case of 2MB blocks happening, try to send a transaction from your wallet to a BU miner. It will reach the miner, but with today's network your wallet will almost never see the 2 MB block and therefore cannot display it as confirmed.

Even Gavin admitted that his definition is wrong when it's applied to BU using invalidateblock to lock in the BU chain.

Bitcoin consensus is whatever the majority of users decide what Bitcoin is. If there is no majority, the consensus is split and the coins will split in two. It's in the best interest of everyone to compromise and agree to this consensus. But if a compromise cannot be reached, then there is no consensus. Current Bitcoin consensus is what it is and defined after the fact by the blocks confirming on the Bitcoin chain.

you are lying again dude: Once a predetermined number of coins have entered circulation, the incentive can transition entirely to transaction fees and be completely inflation free.

How am I lying? The paper doesn't talk about the 21M limit or the 4 year block rewards halving. It just mentions that after a certain point in time, it can transition to fees only. Bitcoin could be implemented as 50 coins per blocks for 8 years and then a sudden drop to 0!

The whitepaper is specific about every rule thats needed for the bitcoin system to work

Ok, i understand your point. Hash power aids to resolve hard-forks between 'valid' chains. What is valid is defined in the business logic of the blockchain application eg you can spend money you dont have, 21 million limit ect.

If some miners decide to introduce inflation, even if there is a majority as soon as they start mining these blocks are rejected. Because the rules are implemented by the bitcoin nodes.

But BU, does not violate the general agreed upon business logic of bitcoin. BU doesn't increase the 21 million limit, nor does it allow people to create money out of thin air. It does however have different scalability rules which if activate will be incompatible with the bitcoin core client.

You say the users will decide, this is defiantly true in terms of the price, but which coin gets to be called bitcoin is arbitrary. Exchanges, payment providers and wallet makers have a much greater say in which coin is named what. In the end, one coin will be worth more than the other and this coin will eventually be called bitcoin in the long run.

If we really want to get pedantic about which coin is bitcoin, I would suggest having a vote. A vote which is proof of stake based. Basically you use your funds to sign a vote that is published to the blockchain. At least this way traders, exchanges and miners will have an understanding how much market cap supports either protocol. If this happened before the fork it will go a long way in reducing the volatility of the two coins.

I appreciate you trying to educate both subs. Folks here know hashrate is not everything. Why do you think we never gave up?

First we update our full nodes to signal to miners we are ready for an update. Secondly miners update their mining nodes to signal to full nodes and exchanges they are ready for an update. Thirdly exchanges make a market choice to upgrade to the version miners are extending. Or if miners are split then run two incompatible nodes. Pick two ticker symbols XBC and XBU and leave it to the fourth group: Speculators.

The stakes are higher than Ethereum and the price to keep a minority chain around is much higher. Hence, one chain will crush the other. I will accept the outcome either way.

Notwithstanding the above; responsible exchanges can help prevent a split by aligning with hashrate majority which so far they are all doing and I anticipate them all to do with BU majority hashrate (with exception of Poloniex).

Whatever you think the point of your post is, you're arguing about satoshi's intention and he made his intention ultimately clear in a couple of words:

We can phase in a change later if we get closer to needing it.

Some may not speak English well, but there is only one interpretation of this. "IF WE GET CLOSER TO NEEDING IT". That means he wasn't against increasing the blocksize and he also didn't say anything about bitcoin becoming an altcoin because of the change.

Nonsense. Satoshi himself described how to increase the blocksize. This itself would have been a consensus change. Do you think he wanted Bitcoin to be called something different after he removed the 1MB DDoS limit? No. But of course you will say that "satoshi is not God, and doesn't know best, coudn't predict the future, and isn't here now, blah blah blah...". So let's go to the real crux of your post:

users will decide which coin they will call Bitcoin. Hashrate and miners don't decide that for the users.

This seems to be your main point. You're right-- users can call either chain whatever they want. Right now, even before a fork happens, users, exchanges and wallets could call it BozoCoin. If they all agreed it was BozoCoin, then it would be so.

But I think you'll be hard-pressed to find the "economic majority" and users changing what it has called Bitcoin for so long, especially with lower fees and a more reliable Bitcoin that re-allows use cases that had been cut off by the restricted blocksize. So basically you are claiming (much as Adam Back does-- and both of you without proof) that the economic majority supports Core-- which is just patently false.

So by your own reasoning, when Bitcoin Unlimited forks, it will be called Bitcoin not because the majority hashrate says so, but because the majority economy wants bigger blocks.

Question: does it matter what is "bitcoin" in brand name? This is possibly the most unimportant aspect of the entire block size / consensus debate.

The name of the system doesn't matter. The properties of it and its composition matter. If 80% fork over to BU and the market decides to call it "BananaCoin," even if it is the same longest chain of what was formerly known as Bitcoin, is it no longer Bitcoin? Does that matter at all if it's still the same individuals with the same numbers at the same addresses?

I think you're missing my question, which is if 80% of users as you say use XYZ, what does it matter if it's called Bitcoin or not? You're splitting hair over a brand name instead of the attributes of the systems.

Gemini Exchange and the Custodian will elect to support the Bitcoin Network with the greatest cumulative computational difficulty in order to engage in bitcoin transactions and the valuation of bitcoin.

You are using highly opaque and political means to measure majority that conveniently fits your SegWit agenda.

If 75% of the miners decided to remove the 21 million BTC cap, decrease average block time interval to 5 minutes, readjust difficulty every block, and increase miner reward, would anyone here call that "bitcoin"?

What Charlie is saying is 100% accurate. Users decide what bitcoin is, not the miners.

Userbase (the market) does decide what Bitcoin is, and the miners follow that. If they don't, Bitcoin is broken. So if the miners do something major you don't like, it either means (a) the market is against you, or (b) Bitcoin is not a thing and can never work, as the fundamental assumption that the majority of miners will always be intelligently profit-seeking was demonstrated to be false.

Userbase (the market) does decide what Bitcoin is, and the miners follow that.

Agreed, which is why BU will never actually pull off a fork. You can semi-easily convince 4 or 5 disgruntled mining pool operators to run BU as a protest, but you'll never convince the entire market to run that dangerous buggy software.

So if the miners do something major you don't like, it either means (a) the market is against you, or (b) Bitcoin is not a thing and can never work, as the fundamental assumption that the majority of miners will always be intelligently profit-seeking was demonstrated to be false.

Or some miners make a mistake by taking a chance on a contentious change, in which case they'll lose funds, realize what they've done, and move back to the chain that the market supports.

The mapping of the label "bitcoin" to a set of consensus rules is only a human construct and therefore is defined based on socio-political phenomena, not technical rules. I agree with everything in the OP. The nice part is, Bitcoin/BU/SegWit doesn't care what people call it. It functions just the same.

I'm not sure why you're being met with such opposition. It seems like the arguments are that BU should be called "bitcoin", because of something in the whitepaper.

If BU supporters want to refer to BU as "bitcoin", then they can/should. They can't/shouldn't force others to do the same. The convenience of using common labels is a societal problem that will eventually work itself out. If enough people call it Bitcoin, then people will tend to converge on this term.

The blocksize cap has been raised before via hardfork. If we want to do this again, what should happen? Should we create political parties, register voters, and have elections?

With Bitcoin it is very simple, you vote with your CPU power. It is an election type that can't be rigged. You get as many votes as you want, and can cast votes as fast as your computer can.

BU wouldn't be a 51% attack, it will be a 75% attack. To think the economic majority would actually stay on the chain that will have a 40 min block time for two month is insane.

There are two holy grails of Bitcoin, the 21 million coin cap, and the irreversibility of transactions. If majority of hashrate changes either of these, then yes you'll end up with two different coins (this is what happened to ethereum).

However, I think it is safe to assume that 75% hashpower voting to change either of these holy cows will NEVER happen. Arguing that 75% hashrate to increase blocksize isn't Bitcoin because 75% could increase the coin cap is extremely disingenuous. You are comparing apples to monster trucks.

Also, economic consensus generally refers to merchants. What merchants don't currently want a blocksize increase? I think you could argue there is already economic consensus for at least a modest blocksize increase, but Core is blocking it at all costs.

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